New cookery and recipe blog

I took the plunge this week; the first plunge, anyway.  Hopefully there will be others to come.

Plunge number 1 is this; I've started a recipe blog.  If you're interested you can find it here: http://freefromfoodwithimsfire.blogspot.co.uk/

Whole lot of random goin' on

I got in tonight after a hot busy and frustrating day at work - which is better than a hot boring frustrating day, don't get me wrong here - but oh, it was a maddening day!  Something I have been waiting ages for is proving painfully difficult to achieve, and it's setting me more and more behind in my own job with each passing day.  I sent the person who has it even worse than me a marvellous picture of a dreadnought (HMS Agamemnon, 1915, to be precise) as consolation, but I doubt if it made much difference to him.  I'm the one turned-on by Edwardian battleships, not him (I blame my brothers).  But anyway, the day wound to an inconclusive end eventually, and I picked up my bag and came home.

Poured myself a large G&T and cooked supper.  Logged on to facebook and found a bizarre collection of glorious holiday snaps and horror stories.  Eeech, what a world.  I want more of the happy and the Cornish sunshine, and less of the grief and struggle.  Not just for myself but for all of you.

That's probably the gin talking; apologies if so.

I found a bunch of theatre tickets had arrived in the post today; yippee, ballet galore.  The opera ones are yet to come, likewise theatre and concerts.  But the ballet tickets are one major element in place now.

I'm preparing for my autumn, you see.  One can feel the first nudge of it in the air, mornings, and the first scent of it too, musty and fungal and sweet, as though someone had devised a new kind of incense made of rot.  Come autumn, I need a full programme of Kulchah to keep me going through the cold dark days of winter.  Though I will hope to go away somewhere for my birthday (& to do it successfully this year instead of being spectacularly & messily ill as I was last year). 

Supper was a good one.  Last Friday when I had the chance to enjoy that rather spiffing & classy afternoon tea with my colleagues, one of the things I was chatting about with a certain very lovely chap was the question of whether or not one could take home the unused sandwiches in a doggy-bag and make a kind of savoury bread-and-butter pudding with them; slice them into a baking dish, soak in egg + milk, and bake.  We agreed it would probably work.  I realised afterwards that I was thinking of strata, which I remember having on holiday in Italy at some point, and which is pretty much exactly that, but with a rather more select choice of fillings (i.e. crab and prawns and buttery onions, not ham and cucumber and egg-&-cress and salmon).  I forgot to ask for my doggy bag, anyway; but ever since I have been thinking at intervals of the singular deliciousness that is egg and bread cooked together; strata, eggy bread, egg-in-a-basket, bread omelette, bread pudding, croque monsieur, croque madame...

So tonight I made myself a kind of Greek-inflected cousin of these; Croque Kyrie, I suppose I could call it.  Delicious, dead easy, and I imagine it would also work well with the splendid substance that is Genius Bread, for my coeliac friends.

Went down very well with the G&T, too.

For each person, you will need:
2 slices off a sandwich loaf
2 eggs
some feta cheese
pepper
olive oil
a tomato

Beat the eggs thoroughly with some pepper and pour over the sliced bread in a flat dish.  Leave to soak for half an hour minimum.  Sandwich two slices of the soggy eggy bread with a thinnish slice of feta cheese and press down hard.  Yes, you will get eggy fingers.  Tough.  Wash your hands.

Heat a bit of olive oil in a frying pan; get it good and hot to start with.  Pick up your gooey eggy cheese sarnie and slip it into the hot oil.  Fry for five minutes on a fairly high heat, then turn the heat down to pretty low and turn the sandwich over carefully with a spatula.  Continue cooking on the other side.  Turn again after a while.  Turn it two or three times altogether; gently does it each time.  The idea is never to let it burn but to get all the egg cooked and the cheese all melted and delish.  Part of the way thru', put in the halved tomato, skin side down, beside the sandwich, and fry that as well.  Ideally you want to get the tomato just slightly blackened on the skin and volcanically hot inside.  Serve hot, with some olives for an additional punch of flavour.

Incidentally, this would make very good hot canapes if you cut it into 1 inch squares.

After that I watched the cricket highlights from Old Trafford.  YEAH.  OKAY.

Not only are England doing okay in the test match but it's been a good week culturally as well.  Last Thursday I went to see "Guardians of the Galaxy", which is rollicking good stuff, thoroughly exciting, almost unnaturally well-cast (a Marvel speciality, this) and looks fantastic as well.  Last weekend I went to a wonderful show at Dulwich Picture Gallery, "Art and Life", with some stunning pieces by Winifred Nicolson, one of my heroine artists.  I've also seen "The Immigrant" recently on dvd; that looks tremendous, too, and it's brilliant as well - but heart-breakingly sad.  And finally I've been getting on with some sewing and I've written about 4,000 words on the western story.  Add in that excellent posh tea as well and it's not been a bad seven days.

And since I haven't seen the crush since then, except briefly in the distance, I am getting over the hiccough of seeing him last Friday, too.  Bless him, dear man.  I am determined to put this behind me.  I really don't want to cause him a problem (he's a very nice chap & I'd hate it if I did) so this is just as well, really.  I vow to let it go.  I will let it go.  I will.  I swear.  Or at least, the gin swears.  Gin is much given to that, after all.

And tomorrow is Friday again.  Good grief, where do the weeks go?

In which I realise I may have a problem

Well, several problems, maybe; but I'm thinking about one particular one here.

This problem doesn't have brown eyes (down, Cryptic, there's a good hound!) and it doesn't live in the upstairs flat and play the sodding piano at one a.m - although the problem who does do that is certainly still a problem I have. 

It has a screen and a keyboard connected to it; but it isn't the ticketing system at work (which is behaving quite well for me at the moment, hurrah!).

Some time on Bank Holiday Monday morning the internet connection here in the flat crashed.  It remained crashed for around 60 hours, which time included two whole evenings. 

During those two evenings I wrote approximately 6,500 words. 

Since I had spend most of Monday during the day either baking or lounging under a tree at Kew Gardens with my dear Dip and talking of many things (including, if not cabbages and kings, at least chocolate and graphic novels and the potential usefulness of being able to turn oneself into a chair as a fighting method), I didn't write anything until the evening anyway.  And yesterday was a work day, and a fairly hectic one at that, so again, no writing till the evening. 

I did a lot of writing in those two evenings, then.  Without this thing to distract me.

So that is my problem; I think I have a bit of an internet addiction.  Gosh, how very modern of me.  But also, oh shit. 

Monday was lovely, though; so good to catch up properly with Dippiest Dip the Dipterist, so good to roll in the grass chilling out, so good to eat too much.  And the chocolate and raspberry buns were rather splendid, though I say it myself.

Weary but not unprofitable

Oof.  I am tired and I have backache.

I love bank holiday weekends; three days off instead of two, yea!  So despite going out last night and eating far too many tapas, and drinking far too much sangria, on top of far too many cocktails, and consequently feeling pretty wiped out today, I have still got two days off after this.

Party last night was the one I was worry-warting about a few days ago, the posh one in the smart bar uptown.  I really don't run to much moderately dressy clothing (I have one summer dress and a few really evening-y things) so I compromised on one of my new blouses and my turquoise green linen slacks, and my big gesture towards being dressy was to wear (gasp) make-up.  I never usually wear more than a dab of lippy at most.  Looking in the mirror at myself in lip-liner and lipstick and mascara and sparkly highlighter and concealer was rather odd, and I confess my first thought was that I looked like a cartoon version of myself.  So when I got to the party and overheard one guest saying to another "Is that Imogen over there?" I wasn't sure whether to be gratified or thoroughly embarrassed. 

 It was a good party though; the cocktails were amazing and the tapas were plentiful and tasty, and the company was good.  There came a point though at about 10.30 or 10.45 when the music was cranked up, and I suddenly couldn't hear a thing anyone was saying to me.  Not being able to have a conversation rather takes the pleasure out of a party if one isn't young and lovely and partying in order to flirt (there were plenty of attractive interesting people there, so partying to flirt would have been a thoroughly enjoyable activity had I been 28 instead of 48!).  And it wasn't my kind of music anyway.  I'd entertained hopes of something Latin, as it was a Spanish club; I can still pull off a passable salsa and merengue, though I no longer remember the footwork of the chachacha.  But thumping-bass "dance" music isn't my cup of tea.  So I snuck off home, and slept abominably, probably on account of all those cocktails, and managed to lie in an odd position and give myself backache...

What else?  The National Theatre "King Lear" was even better than I expected/hoped/feared.  I can now say I have finally seen a production that really, utterly worked.  It was cold and clear-headed and lucid, and terrifying, and heart-rending.  Talk about being purged with pity and terror; my God, was I gutwrenched.  Simon Russell Beale was tremendous. Not a Lear with any kind of comfort in him, but a harsh, desperate man with dementia, battling his own slow descent, and failing. Stephen Boxer was a phenomenally good Gloucester, too - the embodiment of that poem about realising the man being tortured in the next room is the bureaucrat you thought would save you (it's by Margaret Atwood, I think, but I can't find the bally book in the muddle of my shelves at the moment). 

I came out and stood at the bus stop in the torrential rain feeling as though I were a speck of dust to be trodden underfoot and ground to nothing.  Hardly a comfortable feeling; but it was a powerful and a kathartic evening, and sometimes, when one is strong enough, these are worth all the grief and pain they evoke.

It did leave me teribly aware though of how much I miss seeing my old mate Alan; he's pretty much house-bound these days and I don't think he's been to the theatre for a couple of years.  He is 84, in fairness, so he's entitled to take things more quietly if he wants to.  But I would have loved to discuss this production with him; the details, the way no-one was "verse-speaking" and so the verse became like powerful, slightly cadenced but perfectly real speech, the stage design and the fantastic sound design, the casting decisions...  I do have theatre and opera and ballet-going buddies, but few of them are as knowledgeable, or as up for a hearty debate on the director's intentions and the political connotations of the blocking of Act one Scene one, and all the rest of it, as dear old Alan. 

What elose, what else?  I booked a holiday yesterday.  I'm going back to lovely Kefalonia for a week at the end of the month; back to the same place I've been to for the last two years, Katelios.  This time I'm going to be staying right in the heart of the village, in studios built above one of the harbourfront tavernas.  I've tended to be in quiet places in the middle of fields, lately, so this is a bit of a departure for me - the last time I had accommodation in the middle of a town was staying on Poros, way back before I went to college. 

Hopefully it won't be too noisy (after all, Katelios is hardly Ayia Napa; the worst I'm likely to get is some music and buzz from the tavernas).  But it will be lovely to be back there.  Katelios is small and rather scruffy, with a lovely but relatively undeveloped beach, and some good walking in the area, and it has just enough in the way of touristic infrastructure that one can get a good meal or an ice-cream, and a peaceful drink before supper, and book a boat trip...

I can hardly wait. 

The last six months have been hectic at work.  It seemed to take forever to shake off that horrible bug I had at my birthday.  I seem to be permanently tired at the moment, and there's no sign of any let-up for the forseeable future.  Even the writing is stalled at present, apart from this sudden attack of poetry. 

The western I've been working on is stuck, at a stage where I know what I've written isn't right and needa a full rewrite, and the next part doesn't gel yet.  But once I get past that problem, I've got the next two chapters written out in long-hand already. So all I need to do is join up the gap.  It ought to be easy; I'm going to have another bash at pushing on through the pain barrier this afternoon.  It's going to take me to the point of killing off a minor character who I don't feel I've done justice to (he's the bit that needs to be rewritten) and that feels oddly mean and wrong when he's not been got down on the page right to begin with. 

Ugh, I went all through this with Jamie Weston in "Gold hawk" and I'm doing it again?  Why do I kill characters off at all if it's so hard to do?  Maybe I should settle for writing nice cuddly fluffy stuff where everyone is happy and no-one is ever troubled or untruthful or unfaithful or wrong-headed, and nobody ever gets hurt or dies; where all misunderstandings are righted and all love is true. 

The problem is, that would be crap.  I write what comes to me, I can do no other; and sometimes it's a mess, and sometimes people die.  Torstein Riis is going to die.  I'm a-gonna kill you, Sheriff, so watch out!  Then Wood will be free to go about the countryside being miserable and avenging people he feels he's betrayed for a while (this is the part that exists in long-hand).  In my long-hand notebook I started writing the denouement a couple of days ago. 

Maybe I should skip the part that isn't working altogether and type up my long-hand sections, and then come back and fill the gap?  "Gabriel Yeats" was written in lumps and bumps and raggedy chunks like that, after all.  It's not my best work but I think its weaknesses are due to other factors than the eccentric way I wrote it.  I managed to kill of Thomas Rosenau easily enough, come to think of it, and I adored Thomas.  Maybe I'm getting lily-livered with my old age...

Hmmph; and maybe I should get on with the writing, instead of with the writing-about-writing...

No, I must not think like this; I must not sit here telling myself I'm feeble and awful and am getting nowhere.  It isn't true.  I am making progress.  It may not be tidy progress but it is progress nonetheless.  I am weary, yes, but not stale, or flat, or unprofitable. 

There have been some big pluses to the last six months.  Several new friends, for starters.  I have met some really lovely kindred spirits online lately (hello, Kath, if you're reading this!).  And work has thrown me recently into the company of someone I've always been curious about, who has turned out to be interesting, witty, immensely likeable, and possessed of that undervalued quality, great kindness. 

Things like this are huge blessings.  Friends are sweetness and salt, after all; the essential seasoning of even the most quiet and enclosed life.

The writing is progressing; and poems are not to be sniffed-at when they pop up in the interstices.  The Muse is random in her gifts sometimes, but she is still my first and greatest love, and her presence in my life remains another huge blessing.

Life has always been challenging from time to time.  And I've always hated the times when it was not, so I have no business complaining now when it is. A great many things, including pressure, struggle and frustration, are better than the soul-sapping effects of being bored.

So - I suppose that means, onwards and upwards for the remainder of today.  With maybe a session in the kitchen to start with, since I've promised to make gluten-free chocolate and raspberry cake for tomorrow...

...and it's hot...

London is baking under a brilliant blue sky; summer arrived a couple of days ago, knocking most normal humans flat.  indoors, the temperature is 29 degrees - that's just below 80 F, for those of you on old money - and compared to out in the sun, indoors feels cool.

Luckily I knew it was coming.  What a great institution the Met Office is; accurate weather forecasts have not always been with us, after all.  Gods bless them and their weather satellites!  I was able to get to bed reasonably early last night and get up fairly early this morning.  It's now ten to two, or thereabouts, and I have washed a load of clothes and hung them to dry, and been into Brentford to go to the supermarket and the street market (for the excellent fruit and veg, if you're curious, as well as a chance to practice self-denial over a lot of temptations for foodies like an olive specialist and a stall from the Old Maids of Honour tea-rooms).  I've lugged back my week's groceries and veggies and brought my washing in again; it had dried in not much more than an hour.  I've baked four spinach and feta pies and braised some baby carrots and broad beans in lemon butter sauce, and cooked a big bag of fresh gooseberries.  I've had some lunch; and now I'm free to have a quiet afternoon.

Yesterday too I stayed in and took things quietly.  I finished reading "Wolf Hall" (superb) but then I got so hot and dopey I ended up having a siesta, and I may do the same this afternoon too.  But I'd like to get some writing done.  With the help of a lot of cold drinks.

I also want to paint my toenails; since I have no intention of wearing anything but sandals on my feet in this weather I may as well have coloured toes.  No-one's looking at my feet, I know, unless perhaps it's to wonder if they are the smelly ones; but it pleases me to have nail varnish on, anyway.

I finished the writing up of "Gold Hawk"; did I say that already?  I managed it, with a final push, by the story's first birthday, middle of last month.  It does still need some further revision; my dear beta-reader the DipGeek has given me some very useful feedback, and the last chapter needs to be tweaked a bit more.  But I'm not too disappointed in it.  It was never meant to be a work of any literary merit, but an adventure story and a piece of fun.  So if anyone reading it enjoys the story and roots for the characters, my work is done.

Now I'm neck deep in several short things all chugging along at their own pace, hoping to get one or two of them finished and make a return to one of the longer stories that have been in abeyance for a while (yes, there are several of them, too).  I'm no nearer finding an agent, no nearer being published anywhere except online, but I'm writing fairly steadily and I'm happy with that.  The Muse in her capricious way has given me a lot of stories to juggle at once, and I'm not a natural juggler, but I'm doing my best.  Creativity comes and goes, and I have always found that the best thing, if you possibly can, is to run with it...

Well, this is odd; five:two diet (update)

I still haven't lost that much actual on-the-scales weight on this here five-two diet; just over a stone, in around six months (and that's including a month off after the flu and a couple of shorter breaks).  But I have changed shape so much; it's really quite odd.

My boobs are still the same size, hurrah.  But I've had to take two pairs of trousers in at the waist.  And when I tried on the two shirts I thought I was going to have to let out - to see how much I needed to let them out by - I found that I don't need to let them out anymore.

And three pairs of jeans that were close-fitting, bordering on tight, all through the upper third are now comfy at the waist and loose in the thigh.

I know raving about diets is a problem for some people.  I've never been a dieter before, much less a diet fangirl.  If you know me, you know I'm definitly not a closet anorexic with horrendous denial issues...  But it is really satisfying to lose weight, off the bits that needed to lose it, painlessly and straightforwardly, like this.  And to feel so healthy on it (at least now I've shaken off that miserable flu and its aftereffects).  

I'm enjoying my days off, although aware (from the degree that I've slumped) that I had indeed got very, very tired lately.  I'm doing some writing and some sewing, I'm having a lie-in in the mornings, and yesterday I had lunch out and made a batch of fudge (which came out a bit funny, but still tastes good).  Writing, sewing, cookery; all very fulfilling creative acts.

Life is okay, yep, I think so...   And realising how tired I've been getting has made me decide that if I possibly can, this year, I'm going to have a full two weeks away in Greece, instead of the one week I have ended up with the last few years.  It's worth committing a bit more money to, to get that utter peace, the pine-scented clean air, and the swimming in the sea and reading as much as I want...  So if I get the chance, this week, I'm going to try and book that.

Well, this is a pleasure...

I have a week off.

Nothing planned for it, not going away, not even going away for the weekend.  Nothing.  Yet there is so much to do!  I feel as though I may finally catch up with myself.  Work has been hectic lately (far, far better than being bored, I remind myself hastily - I have had jobs in the past that were really boring, and it's a seriously grim experience).  Life has felt like one long session of chase-my-own-tail, only without the fun that cats and dogs seem to get out of it, and I'm tired.

I've almost completely given up watching the tele lately, in order to get some more writing done.  I had read that it was a very effective trick, and I can now vouch for that.  I gave myself a long holiday from "Gold Hawk", and wrote a lot of other bits and bobs, and gave my brain a proper rest before facing up to the painful task of killing off my heroine's family.  The bits and bobs were fun to do - a few of them are on ICW and there are some others on a tumblr-writers' blog called jrfrustration, if you're interested (though be warned, the two letters at the beginning of that blog address are indicative)...  But now it's back to the real thing again, i.e. hurting poor Anna, and making Thorn feel bad.  I'm such a lovely mama to my characters.

Besides the writing, which I hope to do some of every day this week, I'm planning on taking in a couple of exhibitions and perhaps doing a bike ride along the Thames towpath.  I have some needlework (there are two blouses I want to let out and some trousers to take in, not to mention a pair of summer baggy trews that have been half-finished for about two years).  It's my week this week to clean the flat; bleah, but it has to be done.  I want to bake bread and make some dried-apricot jam and a couple of batches of proper crumbly fudge (I'm thinking one lot classic vanilla, one lot honey-walnut...).  I want to turn out my summer clothes, since out of the blue the weather has turned warm and bright and one can finally believe the spring is here.  I want to catch up with some of the weird bits of shopping that get postponed week after week because one simply doesn't have the effing time to go trailing around looking for odd things like expanding compost.  I want to de-mealy-bug my phalaenopsis again.  And I'd to try and catch up with the Dipterist, who I haven't seen for ages and who could probably do with a break (maybe I can bribe her with fudge?).  

Of course, that is a huge wish-list and I probably won't do the half of it.

I also aim to catch up on some sleep.  Did some of that this morning, which is why I'm now more than halfway through Monday already and haven't achieved very much.  I know it looks like sheer laziness!  But, oh, the bliss - having Monday off, and not having to leap from my bed and rush about! 

Okay, enough of this; I've got things to do.  Starting with lunch, and that cleaning.  Get the cleaning out of the way, and the rest of this week is mine to with as I please.  Mine, all mine!

Rock Chick at work...

I have pinched this picture from TCI's facebook page; if I get a bollocking for it, I'll have to delete it!  But it's not often you get to see a photograph of me (I'm camera shy) so I thought this might amuse.  Chutney-making is a serious business, don't you know? 

We made about eight lbs of Apricot and Walnut Chutney, about six lbs of Mixed Fruit Chutney, and about 4 1/2 lbs of an improvised (& very pink) jam made of apples, pears, raspberries and a healthy slug of Crème de Cassis.  "We" being TCI, her pal Alex and me; G. was rehanging the kitchen door at the same time, so there were wood shavings flying around as well and a fair old racket going on.  It was a bit manic, but huge fun.  Having three of us doing all the chopping up made things a lot quicker, though the actual cooking still took a couple of hours for each chutney. 

We had just a scrap left in the pan from the mixed fruit one, so sampled it dobbed onto chunky slivers of sheep's milk cheese.  God, that was good!  I must remember that if I am ever trying to make food I can feed someone with in tidbits. 

In the end we all flopped down exhausted and drank several large martinis, and then went out for gnocchi (+ lashings more cheese) at a local Italian restaurant.  Then I crawled home on the Tube.  A productive Sunday.

Saturday was productive, too; I managed to sort out about half my Christmas gift buying in one mad swoop on Oxford Street.  And in and around all this busyness, sitting on Tubes or buses, or crashed over coffee in John Lewis's, I wrote a couple of short extra sections for "Gold Hawk" and made a pile of notes towards a potential sequel - which led me to start wondering if there's even room for two sequels. This is ridiculous, but a fun thought.  I mean, I started off with just this vague idea for a story, just five months ago, and now I'm getting sequelitis.  I love The Muse; she is the most wonderful thing in my life.  Blessed be!

Cheese sauce and odd coincidences

It always pleases me when I find I have something in common with someone I admire.  If I’m reading an interview with a musician or an actor and they say their favourite holiday destination is the Greek Islands, I think “Ha!  If I were ever stuck in a lift with you, we could talk Greek Islands to while away the time until help arrived.”  Believe me, I can talk Greek Islands till the cows have come home, poured a drink and settled down with their feet up to watch Mastermind...  (Of course, the down-side of this is the slightly yuk feeling one has when one reads an interview with someone and they turn out to have politics that make one wince, or to be deeply evangelical over something one feels cringey about (like loving “Hello” magazine), or they are simply full of sh*t.  It isn’t quite so bad if they turn out to be nice but as thick as a plank, but still rather flattening to one's admiration.  Luckily, admiring musicians and opera singers, actors and artists, ballet dancers and writers and film directors and architects and the like, I tend to find myself more interested in someone when I read an interview, instead of less).   

Anyway; I will try and steer this rambling onwards to the point.

I went home last night and looked in the refrigerator, and saw a random range of vegetables, and a lot of cheese.  I thought “Mmm, macaroni cheese with veg!” and I began preparing the random veg and putting them on the hob in a pan of melted butter to soften, with salt and pepper and about ten cloves of crushed garlic.  The mushrooms soaked up a lot of the garlicky butter, so I added more butter, because to make macaroni cheese with veg you need enough melted butter in the pan to make the white sauce around the veg – they then cook in it (it saves on dishes). 

But then I opened the flour jar; and there was nothing in it.  Oh drat.  No flour = no roux = no white sauce.  Rats!   

I didn’t have any yoghurt or any eggs, so couldn’t do my usual gluten-free cop-out cheesy sauce.    I didn’t have any cornflour, so couldn’t cheat that way either.  I had a pan of butter, garlic and lovely veg braising sweetly away, and another pan of macaroni bubbling merrily beside it.  I swore, being me; but swearing didn’t solve the problem.  I could have thrown the lot out and ordered a takeaway.  I can afford to do that, occasionally, these days.  But it does so offend my pride as a cook, to chuck out perfectly good food; and I knew nothing I could order was likely to taste as good as that garlic smelled.  Good evening, Problem, what do you need?  Problem, meet Solution.

I put couscous in it instead, and went ahead exactly as if it had been flour.

The result was actually very tasty, if a bit heavy on the carbohydrates.  Couscous does not make a roux, but it soaked up some of the butter, and it cooked into a sort of creamy, grainy mush when I added liquid.  There were so many good flavours in there, what with the garlic and broccoli and sugar peas and mushrooms, that by the time I’d slung on some more pepper and half a cup of grated strong cheddar cheese I was almost pleased with my invention.  I don’t think I’ll be serving it to company any time soon, as the texture was fairly odd (& remember, I’m one of those strange people who like cornmeal grits and tofu).  Think cheesy gruel with vegetables, on macaroni.  But, heck, it was food.  That's always an improvement on no food, after all.

And then I was reading an interview online, in my lunch break today, and I found the subject talking about problems and solutions and being able to make a meal out of whatever is in the ‘fridge.  I had to laugh.  I love bizarre coincidences. There have been occasions in my life when odd coincidences have brought me real blessings.  I'd like to hope this one may - I sent GY to yet another agent a couple of days ago.  Please, please, please, let me get what I want...

So anyway, now I know, if I’m ever stuck in a lift with the actor in question, I can wipe the embarrassed stars from my eyes and talk cheese sauce recipes with him.  Mmm. 

Ropey as old rope...

I think I ate something.  Something I ought not to have done, that is.

My relationship with food is strong and healthy – not to mention downright erotic at times.  But there’s nothing like a gyppy tummy to make you think “Why would anyone in their right mind want to eat?”  At the moment, the smell of fish pie wafting up from the kitchens downstairs is nauseating; on a normal day it would have had me doing Homer Simpson impressions. So somewhere, sometime, in the last few days, I have had some bad food... 

I’ve sweated out most of the day at work.  I’ve chugged through all the jobs I needed to get done.  I’m wondering whether to ask if I can go home a bit early, as I am now feeling decidedly ropey.  It’s not the worst stomach upset I’ve ever had (not by a long pole - don’t worry, I won’t bother you with any more details!) but I am shaky and headache-y and queasy, and I just want to lie down.   

I had a horrible dream last night, what’s more.  I was attending an interview with an unbelievably rude and aggressive interview panel who all tried to bully me, and who argued with one another in front of me about everything I said and did.  It was like a conflation of all the worst interviews, worst auditions and worst meetings with management I have ever had in my life; to wake up from that and think “also my insides are up the creek” was an altogether miserable start to the day.

The weekend had gone so well, too.  I shopped, I cleaned, I ran the washing machine.  I wrote.  I went for a walk (Kew is looking lovely).  I cooked some good food (a classic tortilla española with a parmesan-and-asparagus twist, and some very garlicky pea soup).  I watched a good movie.  I watched Britain’s athletes and other sportsmen and women continued to distinguish themselves at the Olympics, as well as the great Serena Williams beating the shrieking beansprout Maria Sharapova comprehensively, which was almost as pleasing (Williams is a joy to watch, and Sharapova is a poseuse).   I bought some new sandals in a sale, and I went to see the English National Ballet’s “Swan Lake” at the Coliseum.

I had booked to see the lovely Daria Klimentová and Vadim Muntagirov; one or the other is out of action, it seems, so I got Anaïs Chalendard, who was good but not great (technically polished, so far as I could tell, but her acting is decidedly one-note – Odette total misery, Odile total bitch is slightly too simplistic for my tastes) and, an unexpected treat, Junor Souza stepping up to make his role debut, and seizing the chance with both hands, as the Prince.  Tall, quirkily handsome, lovely clean lines, partners beautifully, gorgeous jump, and he can act.  Go, Mr Souza! 

I’m not too sure about the production in places, though.  We don’t need to see Rothbart enchant Odette to the sound of the overture, so the beginning irritated me straight off.  It doesn’t clarify matters particularly, since one still hasn’t got a clue why he does it (is he after her?  Is he after Siegfried?  Is he after the throne?  Is he just a mean b*stard?).  It’s just a silly fad, pandering to the kind of audience members who won’t stop talking until there are dancers of stage, and so chatter like rude kids through each of Tchaikovsky’s beautiful orchestral preludes.  I’m sorry to say we did have rather a lot of that kind of audience yesterday.  May they go to the special hell, the one reserved for people who talk at the theatre...

Then there’s too much posturing and gurning generally from Rothbart, and there are one or two other moments when the cheese factor gets a little strong (just think “A Bullet in the Ballet” and you will have an idea what I mean).   But the sets and costumes are good, ENB field a fine corps and some excellent national dances for Act 3, and there’s a strong emphasis on making the blossoming of the relationship between the protagonists really clear.  Odette and Siegfried don’t fall in love because it’s in the script but because they click, and then click more, and trust and longing and hope start to flow between them as each realises the other is what they have dreamed of and prayed to find one day.  Of course, that makes the whole thing even more tragic, but then “Swan Lake” should be tragic – and at least we don’t get a happy ending here, even if from the balcony seats of the Coli I could only see half of the dead lovers’ heavenly apotheosis (the lower half – thoroughly nice legs, but it was hardly the full spectacle, and I was only in the fourth row).

Anyway, that’s my last ballet fix until October.  Sigh. 

It’s nearly five pm – can I stick it out?  I still feel grotty and queasy and I’ve begun burping like a drunken marine.  Not nice.   

Odd, unsettled...

It's an odd patch.  I get bad news, I reel, I find my feet again, I realise that until I get more facts I can't make any decisions or plans, and I am left in limbo.  I won't get more facts until this Thursday at the earliest. 

At least it isn't my health, or that of anyone close to me.  

Meanwhile the weather veers between dramatic late autumnal sunshine and dramatic thick mists and raw chill.  The ground is thick with fallen leaves now, but even now there are still many more clinging on to the trees, for we still have not yet had a single frost, or a single gale. I am beginning to allow myself the hope that the weather for my winter break in Cornwall may be okay.  It's only ten days' time before I go now.

In the last week I have, besides work, been doing some more writing, had an afternoon birdwatching and sketching at the Wetland Centre, baked chocolate orange sultana muffins, had supper with a friend, been to "The Sleeping Beauty" (Marianela Nuñez, absolutely wonderful again as Aurora), sung (badly) in the first Christmas Choir practice and been on a Tree Identification training walk.  I've been busy, and happy.  But I hate this business of being in limbo.  It's like being in the dentist's waiting room, only worse by at least an order of magnitude.  Even if in the end the news is bad, I'd rather know, and at least be able to plan for it...

Guess what? - a busy weekend...

Lately life seems to be amazingly busy. I don’t know if it’s something to do with the burgeoning energy of spring, or simply that I have over-booked myself badly for March and April. I’m not complaining! – it’s lovely to be busy; to be seeing friends and family, going to concerts and ballet and opera, working in the garden, cooking, drawing, writing and so on. It’s great – I hate being bored.

This weekend was certainly hectic. Talking to the bank manager on Saturday, while not exactly fun, was at least useful (I was making arrangements about my savings, so it was the good kind of bank manager interview, not the painful kind). Trying to get my summer clothes sorted out on Sunday was less fun, owing to what I’ll politely call waistline issues. It’s left me with a pile of needlework to do, too, plus I didn’t get the job finished so now have a pile of summer clothes lying on the floor in an unwearable tangle. But - I also made a good chick pea curry and an excellent Spanish omelette, and cleaned the bathroom, and had a spin on my bike admiring magnolias and cherry blossom in other people’s gardens, and nearly did something awful to my back with five hours’ straight working in my own garden (which is still pretty immature, meaning everything is very short and I am bent double the entire time). And finally, after being galvanised by a friend into going out on Sunday afternoon, ended up having white wine and ice cream in a pizzeria on Southampton Row with some more of her friends who were on their way to “Aida” at the Royal Opera. They had standing room tickets, so on balance I didn’t envy them too badly, much though I love “Aida”. But intelligent company is always good, especially on a sunny afternoon with added wine and ice cream.

‘ “My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.”
“That is not good company – that is the best.” ’

(Jane Austen “Persuasion” - but I’m quoting from memory so may have got it garbled).

Pick-of-the-Proms, and romantic comedies...

There were seven concerts I wanted to go to in this year’s BBC Proms season. Two were sold out by the time I came to book, and one clashed with a previous arrangement. I was able to get tickets for the other four, though. As an experiment, I had seats in different parts of the hall for each concert; this was interesting, and useful, though of course putting what I’ve learned into use next year will still depend on availability of seats.

My first Prom was “Meistersinger”. I like “Meistersinger” although it is five hours plus of bum-numbing Wagner; because it has buckets of thrilling music, because unlike most of his work it has a happy ending, and because I have played in the overture (& I still know the triangle part!). I had a seat to the side of the gallery, with a fair view and pretty good sound, and despite the heat it was a good afternoon.

My second Prom was number 32; Tchaikovsky, Janacek and Berlioz. I went with my stepmother Jane and we sat in the choir stalls. The sound is surprisingly good from here, though of course it is off-balance. Jane is used to this, as she plays regularly in an orchestra herself. I’m less adapted to it, as I haven't done so for years, but I also have a less-sensitive ear. We were right above the percussion section, with a splendid view of them and of everyone else except Maxim Rysanov. Recommended if you like watching the conductor (which I like to do occasionally) and don’t mind being blown out of your seat when the timpani let rip (not a problem for someone whose Dad was a timpanist), and of course provided you don’t have a crush on a string soloist.

Third Prom was Lugansky playing the Rachmaninov “Rhapsody”, reviewed last week. For this I was right at the back centre of the gallery. Seats here sell out ahead of the sides of the gallery, but my feeling was that the sound was worse - small and a bit muzzy - and the view awful. The back of the gallery is great, sound-wise, in the Festival Hall and the Barbican Hall, and even in Canterbury Cathedral (most of which has bl**dy lousy acoustics). Not so at the Royal Albert Hall. I have a bit of an “I-love-you” thing about Nikolai Lugansky and I’m sorry I wasn’t a scrap closer to him; it’s amazing just how far away the gallery is from the stage, in that huge building. It’s like trying to see the action from the back row of the Colosseum (NB not the Coliseum – where the cheap seats have surprisingly good sightlines).

My fourth and final Prom was on Friday, and it was easily the best. Of course, it was my favourite orchestra and my favourite maestro, so there is a remote possibility I was prejudiced... I’d splashed out on a seat in the side stalls for this. For me, that gave the best of both worlds; close enough to give me crisp, clear sound and a really good view, but far enough back that I wasn’t swamped by one section of the orchestra. It was a terrific concert.

It’s available on BBC iPlayer, at least for the next few days; sadly iPlayer slots only seem to last a week. The four pieces were well-matched; the Mosolov thrillingly hot stuff, the Pärt symphony haunting, tensely meditative and melancholy, the Ravel a jazzy treat. The final piece, Scriabin’s “Poem of Ecstasy”, which I didn't know before, absolutely blew me away. And Esa-Pekka Salonen was simply wonderful. Do have a look and a listen if you have the time (you can fast forward, in a rough-and-ready manner, to get through the applause and the talking-head presenter). I know I am a creature of crushes, and very boring it must get listening to me rave about them, but honestly; watch the Maestro, and marvel. Now that is one brilliant guy, and a damned attractive one too. And it is corking good music.

I had a constructive weekend afterwards. I got several small irritating jobs done - like retuning my television, which I’ve been meaning to do for months, and mending the handle of my nail scissors. I did a lot of gardening, bought my spring bulbs and made another batch of jam (strawberry and blackberry – oh yes, it’s good!). But I slept badly and had weird dreams on both Friday and Saturday night. On Friday it made sense; I was hyped-up after the concert, fizzing with energy after the magnificence of the Scriabin, and couldn’t shake the mental image of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s honey-and-silver hair and elvish smile, and his marvellous energy.

But Saturday puzzles me; I’d had a good, busy day, spent plenty of time outdoors in the fresh air, and had a very nice supper of home-cooked fasoladha and roasted squash with feta cheese. Then I dreamed that someone I was at college with had gone to live on the island of Hvar in Croatia and got in trouble. I woke up and said to myself “It’s just a dream”, got back to sleep – and had the same dream again. Creepy.

Last night I really wanted a relaxed, no-need-to-think evening. I cooked a dead-simple supper of pasta, veg and tuna, and sat down and watched tele. So I’m a slob. I ended up with a film called “Sweet Home Alabama”, which I’d heard was a good straightforward romantic comedy. It starred Reese Witherspoon, who is such a delight in the first “Legally Blonde” film (& is so badly let-down in the second by a truly dire plot and script). It didn’t look too intellectually taxing, which was fine, as I wanted fun, not intellect. I have plenty of opera and classic French art movies on dvd if I want to be intellectual.

But it just didn’t work for me. I didn’t really like any of the characters. I felt the heroine was silly, shallow and mean, and so was the husband she had fled from. There was no explanation of why their marriage hadn’t worked, beyond a nasty story about him throwing up at the wedding. I have no doubt that that would be vile, and infuriating – but grounds for separation? Not among grown-ups, I hope. The man who wants to marry the heroine seemed far too old-fashionedly decent and nice to be in love with her. It just – didn’t work. I gave up about halfway through, so I may have missed the moment when suddenly it all came together. But I don’t want to have to sit with a film for over an hour without a single character getting my sympathy.

It’s funny what works and what doesn’t, in films, tv, fiction, you name it. I guess it’s partly a matter of taste. Comedy is such a personal thing, too; and romantic comedy must be particularly hard to write and to play. I loved “Legally Blonde”, I enjoyed “Maid in Manhattan” and “Pretty Woman” – and the latter is about as air-headed a fantasy as they come – and “While you were Sleeping”, and “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”, and “Practical Magic” and “Hitch” and “Mystic Pizza” and “Moonstruck” and “Groundhog Day”… So I know I am perfectly capable of sitting down with a chocolate box Girls’ Night-type movie and enjoying it for exactly what it is. I just wish I’d had one last night.

At least I slept okay afterwards; and no bad dreams. But no lovely orchestral ones, either.

More constructive stuff...

And yesterday evening, I:

made a huge lentil and cauliflower biriyani;

and a huge bowlful of sliced and lightly-sugared strawberries;

ate some and put the rest in the fridge for another night;

put on some cheerful music to sew to;

realised after mending one shoulder strap that I simply couldn't sew to this particular music (the Warsaw Village Band) as it was far too energising;

and set up my easel with a sheet of A4 cartridge paper and spent an hour drawing like a maniac, working from some of my orchestra sketches from the autumn, getting covered in charcoal till I looked like a comedy coal miner...

I drew my favourite Maestro. I know, I know, crushes are the mark of a feeble mind. Tough; it's a good drawing. Yes, I did actually say that. I'm quite pleased with it, and I don't say that often; this morning I woke up to find the figure on my drawing board staring across the room at me, which is spooky but very satisfying. It means the drawing has "got" him, at least a bit.

Tonight I'm off to "Idomeneo" at the ENO, so won't be able to get back to the drawing until Thursday. I hope that when I get in at midnight or so tonight, I will still see him watching me (a girl can dream!...).

When I work in a large scale in charcoal I tend to overlay drawing upon drawing, so that part of the interest comes from the interaction between multiple layers of images. I discovered years ago at college that this process worked with images of buildings, especially interiors; and have since learnt it is also very effective with portraits. So at the moment my image of the Maestro has five arms and two layers of head; he looks like Shiva in a black velvet jacket.

It was interesting to realise that the Warsaw Village Band is absolutely not music to sew to. They're terrific; slightly mad stuff, a wildly trippy fusion of traditional Polish folk music and psychadelic trance, hypnotic and driving. As "get up and dance" - or "get up and draw", in my case - music, they're hard to beat. I sewed to Sibelius (Violin Concerto) and Rachmaninov (Symphonic Dances) yesterday; fabulous music, but music I could sew to.

Different energies, different rhythms, and different responses to them. Neither is less than the other; but they are not the same. No, different magics altogether.

Long live all the many and various magics of this world! - including the magic (for it certainly is one) of charcoal.

Constructive stuff...

Yesterday evening I:

Sewed patches on three pairs of trousers

Did a lightening extra edit on GY after re-reading part of it and seeing a new shade of purple where I'd not spotted it before

Made and ate a nice stir-fry with smoked tofu and greens

Watched the film of "Let the Right One in" - beautifully made and acted, not particularly scary, very, very sad. One of the best films-of-the-book I've come across. Could the fact that John Ajvide Lindquist wrote the screenplay based on his own novel have anything to do with it?

And - had a very good dream. One of my favourite sorts of dream, the kind that gives one the germ of a story. GY started with a dream, and eventually led me to over 100,000 words. No idea if this dream is cooking like that, but it was still a good dream. A Sci-Fi dream (oh, yes, I'm low, I am).

Busy busy bee...

It's been a busy few days. At work, the sunny weather has brought people out of hibernation and into Planning Mode; we are humming with enquiries about spring flowers, Easter children's activities, what will be looking good next Tuesday week, do we have hanami sessions, and so on. A few people are even planning what they'll be doing in July, August, October...

The colleague who seemed to be cracking up has come back to work, distinctly manic and not her normal self, but insisting she is fine. She's not quite off-beam enough that she can be required to go home, so we are all watching her with trepidation as she rushes about in an alarming display of hysterical energy, knowing that at any moment an ill-judged remark may infuriate her and precipitate an outburst. Poor woman; I don't know what's triggered it, though I have my suspicions, but it's deeply worrying to watch, and there is nothing any of us can do to help - especially since she denies vehemently that anything is wrong...

On the home front, Mauro, the pleasant but terribly self-absorbed Italian guy who has been running a catering business from home (in complete violation of both food safety regs and the terms of his tenancy!) has suddenly moved out. Hurrah! We no longer have to work round the edges of "Mauro's Italian Kitchen"! That "hurrah" would be in bold were it not for the fact that, on moving out, he has nicked a couple of the household saucepans, the colander, one of the wooden spoons and about a dozen clothes pegs. He also tried to take the throw from the living room sofa, and all of my teatowels, but was stopped by Lana who just happened to come home early and noticed them among his boxes of stuff. I don't condone his stealing some of the pans (and it is bl**dy inconvenient suddenly having fewer pans than one used to have - oh, and of course he has left behind the scratched and battered ones and taken the decent quality fairly new ones) but I can see how someone might think selfishly "I want some saucepans, I can't afford to buy my own, why shouldn't I take these?". But to pinch a wooden spoon? A plastic colander from Poundshop? Clothespegs? That takes petty theft to a whole new level...

I continue to make very slow improvement with the wrist. I can now lift about two kilos, provided I do it very carefully and at the right angle. I am confident enough of handling a sharp knife to have resumed a bit of cooking; at the weekend I made a spinach pie, some banana and chocolate chip buns, and a lot of carrot soup. I've eaten a lot of mass-produced food in the last few months, with the inevitable higher fat and salt intake (& I have the extra lbs and fluid retention to prove it), so it is particularly satisfying to get back to doing some normal cooking, however clumsily.

And the sun is out, and the daffodils are just starting to open, and in my back garden I have four Narcissus "Tête à tête", a polyanthus and about sixty crocuses out. Spring is coming!

I just ate my lunch: Jansson’s Frestelse (the spelling of which I’m sure is wrong!). Fish, potatoes, onions, garlic, black pepper and cream. The easiest fish pie in the world, and in my opinion the best. Followed by a Delicje malinowe, which is a Polish raspberry jaffa cake. Cor, yum. This is a fairly unhealthy lunch, of course, but I’ve got a cup of green tea and a pile of clementines to finish off with, which will tip the balance back a little towards antioxidants and vitamins and so forth.

Going home tonight to make a cauliflower and parsnip gratin. Yes, making and enjoying good food is definitely one of the aspects of creativity, albeit one which is seldom cited as such. As I’ll have the oven on I may bake biscuits as well…

More and more I feel in sympathy with Rebecca West’s definition of creativity as being a continuum, running from someone baking a good cake at one end to the work of Mozart at the other. Gardening is in there, as well as cookery, and so are all the activities derided by the Fine Art world as “crafts” – knitting and patchwork quilting, making greetings cards (I have a nice range of hand-made valentines, if anyone is interested), making jewellery, clothes-making, pottery and clay-modelling… the list is, to coin a phrase, endless. While personally I think “Clay artist” is an unutterably silly piece of newspeak, and “Craftsman potter” sounds noble and authentic, and altogether rather good, I do heartily dislike the implied minor status generally accepted as implicit in the terms “craft” and “craftsman”.

Especially let no-one who wants to be taken seriously as a fine artist permit themself ever to be called a “good craftsman”. To actually be good at the basic skill of one’s art form is the kiss of death, relegating one (in some people’s eyes at least) irrevocably to the ranks of the amateur. How nonsensical that is…

These raspberry jaffa cakes are the tops, by the way. Good old Gudi Food Stores. I love Ealing.

Monday evening...

Very pleased today to get an email from an old friend from college saying she has been looking at this! I'm saddened by her remark that she feels now she was one of those who just gave up at that moment in the third year at college; but cheered to learn that like me she has found her creative drive simply won't go away completely. Maybe that is what distinguishes the 4% from the other 96% - come hell or high water, the Muse stays with us and, for want of a better term, nags us until we find a creative outlet of some kind.
I've always felt very strongly that there is a totally unnecessary prejudice (within the arts as a whole) against certain types of creative self-expression - cookery, gardening, but also everything classified as a "craft" rather than an art form, and all the illustrative types of art such as archeological and botanical draughtsmanship. It furthers a snobbish and heirarchical (have I spelled that right? it's one of my blank spots) art world, and creates a system that shows preference to its own, and dismisses most of the world as mere lowly mortals who haven't got talent. Considering some of the twerps who are officially sanctioned as being "talented" I think I'd rather keep company with the gardeners and the craftspeople!
Dear me, I'm ranting, and I'm cross enough that my grammar is slipping.
Change of subject, quickly.
I started trying to do some collography on Sunday - hindered by having rather thin cardboard, but bashing away at it nonetheless. Two plates are drying at home and tomorrow evening I'll have a go at printing from them. Who knows? - I may take one look at the results and retreat whimpering, but I thought I'd have a try.
I'm also trying to keep galvanising the Creative Arts Club I've started at the place where I work. Everyone is busy and burdened with other commitments, but we have managed to have a couple of sketching evenings, and three of us went together to the RA Summer Exhibition (this was the mixture as usual, and it was fascinating to go around the show with someone to talk-to). I don't like coming over as a badgery sort of person saying "Come on, folks, let's have a get-together!" - like some demented school games mistress - but if we don't meet we don't have a group. Everyone was so enthusiastic when I first mooted the idea, but we're all so busy.
I'm finding the tendency this system has to revert to this seriffed typeface every time I take my eye off it very irritating! Drat it, I want Arial! Give me Arial! Bah. I think maybe I'm tired; I will stop looking at this screen and go out dancing for the evening instead.